Rick Beato, a renowned producer and host of a popular YouTube channel about music and the music industry, demonstrated how the AI band The Velvet Sundown was created. In just 10 minutes, Beato generated a virtual indie artist named Eli Mercer using free AI services and "recorded" his single, which is ready for release on streaming platforms.
In the published video, Beato points out that the case of The Velvet Sundown is an example of how prevalent neural networks are becoming in our lives. According to the expert, such cases will become more frequent in the near future due to the increased availability of AI tools. To prove his point, Beato generated an artist and prepared his first track.
He noted that the video he created is atypical for him — he did not intend to do anything like this when he launched his channel. The video resulted from the producer's desire to demonstrate that creating The Velvet Sundown is not special — anyone can generate an artificial band. Free access to popular AI generators is sufficient for this task.
To create the artist's image, Rick Beato used ChatGPT. The producer asked ChatGPT to create a "square avatar of a fictional indie singer" and to come up with a name for the singer. Thus, after several iterations, Eli Mercer was created. According to the neural network, he performs "low-fi anthems with deeply personal lyrics and vintage-sounding guitars."
Next, Beato used an AI text generator called Claude to write lyrics for a song. Beato notes that he did not provide any specific instructions to the neural network but merely came up with a title for the song. Claude then generated the lyrics independently.
The resulting text was sent to the music generator Suno, which created several versions of the song based on the lyrics. Beato described the music as "acoustic with an airy atmosphere and male vocals in an alternative genre," and then received several versions of the composition.
Thus, using software generators, Beato created a performer, developed an image for him, and "wrote" and "recorded" a song in just a few minutes. As a result, the producer received a track ready for release on streaming services.
Commenting on his actions, Rick noted that the growing availability of AI could lead to a situation in which algorithms replace creative work.
I don't need to spend 10 or 40 years learning to play a musical instrument. I don't need to be a good lyricist or poet to write songs. In fact, you can simply ask the software to use someone else's ideas to write a song for you. All you need to do is enter a couple of queries in the window.
—Rick Beato
Through his video, Rick Beato aims to show fans of The Velvet Sundown that there is nothing special about it — anyone can generate something similar in minutes. At the same time, Beato hints that stories with artificial intelligence are not creative — they are simply a compilation of ideas based on a general user request.
